This invention relates to wireless communication systems, and more particularly, to data transfer over a wireless communication link.
A wireless transfer of voice, video, and/or data over a short-range communication link may be difficult because short-range wireless communications not only have to be low-power but also have to be able to overcome interference and fading while providing wireless communications comparable to wireline data transmission rates. To obviate some of these constraints while providing a robust short-range communication link between a source and a target transceiver, a constant feedback is generally needed from the receiving end to the transmitting end. More specifically, this feedback may be transmitted as an acknowledgement and voice, video and/or data may be transferred on a data unit-to-data unit basis after receiving feedback for each transmitted data unit. Under these circumstances, a constant supply of data units to be transferred may need to be made available at the source transceiver to continuously transfer voice, video, and/or data to the target transceiver.
Typically, such voice, video, and/or data may be communicated in a plurality of payloads. Each payload may be broken further into one or more packets that are exchanged between at least two wirelessly networked devices or systems. With conventional short-range wireless communication systems, however, keeping more than one payload pending for a wireless transfer at a given time may be difficult. In one of such conventional wireless communication systems, a successful data transfer operation involves transmitting a data packet over an air interface and acknowledging receipt of that data packet (including any retries). After the transmission of the data packet, however, a transmitter must wait for a response indicative of a successful transmission or a timeout from a receiver before preparing a next payload for a transmission. As a result, the latency constraints on data transmission are increased due to the need to wait for the communication of the data packet to complete before preparing the next payload for transmission.
Thus, there is a continuing need for better ways to wirelessly communicate over a communication link.